14 Gal BioCube LED Retro

[Acefspds]

After reading all the hype about LED's in the past a couple months ago I set up my own little project. I have been asked by a couple people what I am testing, wattage, blah blah blah. I figured I would throw it up. Most LED retros you see on the boards all you hear is good good good. This post is not here to bash anything or any kind of lighting. It is here to show my experience with the LED's. This is not a post put up to start any fights, arguements, or anything. If you want to argue (You know who you are!) take it somewhere else. This is a informative thread ONLY!

Here goes:

Tank:
14 Gal BioCube with 2x24w PC's

I did not take many pics of me doing the actual build since there are so many other pics and builds out there. The LED's are wired in series and I have 6 led's on 1 driver.

I wanted to see what the difference was in the cheap LED's (ebay) and the LED's that are sold on this forum in group buys. I am still waiting on my controller to be built for the LED retro I made for my 28g NanoCube but the person has been rather busy and I guess does not have the time to finish the controller. I hope he actually does finish it one day because I would also like to test those LED's. The tank was a FISH ONLY tank so in the end it did not really matter how it came out.

Now for the lights. I installed 3 x 12000k 3w and 3x 445nm unknown LED's that I bought off ebay which came with the driver/power supply. Here is the link.....

http://www.ebay.com/itm/110726579034?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649#ht_823wt_1031

Here are the specs.

Power Supply/Driver:
Constant Current power supply (can not dim)
Input Current: 0.25A
Input Votage: 100-240VAC
Output voltage: 12-25VDC
Output current: 660mA
Dimensions: 2 3/8”(long)x 1 1/4”(wide) x 3/8”(high).
Water proof: IP65.

Here are the LED's:
Blue LEDs: 445 nm (wave Length)
Voltage: 3.4-3.8V
Current: 620mA-650 mA
View Angle: 120 degree.

Emitted Color: White
Color Temperature: White @ 12,000 K
Luminous Intensity: 120~140 Lumen
Voltage : 3.4V~3.8V
Current : 650mA
View Angle: 120 degree

As you can see not the best LED's out there by any means. After doing research most BridgeLux led give about 170-190lm so these "cheap" LED's are not too far behind the BridgeLux. At the high end the are 50lm less per chip which means I would need 1 more of this type for every 3-4 BridgeLux to get about the same lm. The total cost of the entire project including thermal glue, wires, etc was under $40.00. The LED's with power supply/driver ended up being just under $29 shipped to my door. Had I gone BridgeLux it would have cost me more for just the LED chips then I spend on the chips and drivers from ebay. I am not trying to say the ebay LED's are better or anything. I wired up the driver I got from ebay to a string of LED's I bought from someone in SDR and side by side the lights did not look any different. Maybe its just me but only a par meter will tell the secrets which I do not have. I would love to see a PAR reading if anyone close to Vista would like to come and test it for me.

Here are some pics of the finished build. Pics are not the best because I had to take them with my crappy camera phone. I gutted the hood of all the CF junk. I left the moonlights and just used the reflector from the old CF light as my "heatsink" for the LED's. I did not figure I would need a huge heatsink from HeatsinkUSA or anything.


http://i1103.photobucket.com/albums/g470/StonyAce/IMG_20111028_141435.jpg

I ran the tank for a couple weeks without Optics and coral. I do like the blue color the mix of lights give off that is for sure. I do not lose much light into the room either. Most of the light stays in the tank which I also like. As of right now the tank went from using about 50w to using just under 14. The way I see it is if I have to add another 6 LED's I will not be saving much off the power bill. With 12 LED's I will be looking at about 30w give or take which is only 20w under the stock PC lighting which is nothing of a savings which I thought LED's was suppose to do. Save me money.... After a few weeks I threw some Kenya in the tank. About 1-1.5 weeks later the Kenya died (lived just fine under the PC's). I am guessing it died from lack of light. So back to ebay I went and got some Optics. 6 optics 60 Degree for about $5.00 shipped.


http://i1103.photobucket.com/albums/g470/StonyAce/IMG_20111028_141632.jpg
http://i1103.photobucket.com/albums/g470/StonyAce/IMG_20111028_141642.jpg

Installed the optics......
http://i1103.photobucket.com/albums/g470/StonyAce/IMG_20111028_141415.jpg


Fired it up with the optics.
http://i1103.photobucket.com/albums/g470/StonyAce/IMG_20111028_141149.jpg

As of right now I have a rock with a couple more Kenya Trees on it giving the lights another test. If things do not work out this time I will go ahead and add 6 more LED's for a total of 12 which is what every other 14g LED build had I looked at. I just wanted to see if 12 was actually needed or if I could get away with less. Trying to prove to myself that LED's do actually save you money. As of right now it is saving me money but it is not keeping any corals alive. With the visual proof and what is going on in the tank I am still not that impressed with LED's. Only the color. Again I did not go out and buy the highest priced led's on the market. I am trying to do a build at a decent cost.

[whatever]

let us know how the corals like it, and if you see better growth/coloration.

[Acefspds]

I have only tried some softies. The first kenya I put in there ended up dieing. I have some xenia in there at the moment. If this frag ends up dieing I am gonna chalk it up to not enough light and probably add 6 more led's 2 at a time testing each time I add any lights. These leds are the cheapest ones I could find and not as good as cree or semi. I have a 20x3w SemiLED retro built I will be testing as well. I will also build a cree retro and test that vs the others. Basically I am doing a low end (120-170lm), middle of the row (190-200lm), and higher end (225+lm) chip builds to see the difference. All are diy. The SemiLEDs are the ones I bought here from willp2.

I will let you know how they turn out. I just wanna give everything time.

[Acefspds]

I did a rebuild on the hood today. The 6 lower power led's was not enough power to keep any corals alive. I would need at least double the amount of LED's using the cheap ones from ebay. Will make a good fuge light but thats about it. I took out the 6 LED's and replaced them with 8 SemiLED's from Willp2. 4 x Royal Blue 3W (90 degree), 4 x 6500k Cool White 3W (90 degree) 200lm. These will be around 40-60 lm more per led (on the white side). I used a 60w 12v 5A Power Supply from China that was around $10 shipped. I will get some pics up tomorrow but this power supply and these led's will be double the brightness and the power supply allows me to adjust the voltage for dimming. I would like to get a PAR reading but I do not have a PAR meter. From the looks of things it is much brighter then the other LED's which was expected since the Semi are 1 more expensive and 2 more lm per chip. Like I said the next build will test CREE XR-E LED's. These go up to 220lm which are 20 more then the Semi at around the same price. The recent build for the BioCube final cost was around $50.00 (Includes LED's, Power Supply, Flux, Wires).

[Acefspds]

With the 8 brighter SemiLED's I am starting to see some growth from the stump left behind by the kenya that had died. The Xenia is starting to stand up and point towards the lights. I do have the led's running at about 95% power. The only thing I do not like about the led's which I have seen with many led lights is the color bands at the top. You can see where the white and the blue are stand alone and where the white and blue mix. If my clowns are swimming at the top under the white lights they look normal. If they swim under the blue light you see the actinic glow on the fish. Now this can probably be avoided with the led's super close but doing that I would need double the led's. I could also take the optics off but then I would lose PAR and again would need more led's. This is probably why people place the light higher from the tank and blast the light is to allow the light to mix before it hits the top of the water and still get the PAR (Or PUR) needed to sustain life. If you do not mind the band I do not think it actually hurts anything since it looks like the corals are growing. Light is using about 20-23w total. I have 60 Deg optics.

Pic for reference. LED's are about 2-2.5 in apart.
I keep getting invalid URL for my direct photobucket copy and pasted link so here is the link. You can see the band of colors going from blue to white to blue. Pic is the top of the BioCube.

http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j379/Acefspds2/IMG_20111124_121423.jpg

[unbereefable]

I would ditch the xre LEDs and use xpg-r5. It's a common bin that's readily available for cool white. On avg @1amp they put out 360lm. So 3 of these would be the same as 5 of the semileds. And would consume 9 watts. On small builds I think it's only worth it to go led, so you don't have to replace bulbs every 6-12 months. And that's only if LEDs last as long as their manufacturers say the do. You'd probably be fine with that tank with 12 Cree 3 watt LEDs. I say 8 blue and 4 CW. Should give about a 12-15K look and consume <36watts. Probably more around 30 watts if ran at common amperage that most run them at. On bigger tanks I think LEDs are they way to go. If you check out the mother led thread on RC, and several vendors of LEDs, most share the same opinion that 72 watts of cree LEDs (xpgs for whites and xre for blues and royal blues) with the right optics are equal to 250 watt halide. I figure I can light my 180 (6x2x2) with less than 200 watts of LEDs. Verses 750 watts of halides. But luckily for me Ill make my own canopy, so I can take advantehe of tighter optics and raise the light to get more par and less spotlighting. You're stuck with the lid on the on the biocube. Not much you can do about that. I really wish you had a par meter. I would LOVE to see the results.

[Acefspds]

Like I said before. I am not trying to go top of the line and spend all kinds of money. With less led's I will get more spot lighting. The SemiLED's are using around 20w and from the looks of things enough light. It would be pointless to ditch the Semi and pay more money for the higher priced CREE that I do not really need since I get enough light all while using more power.. I do not want overkill at higher wattage. Kills the whole point of the build. I want an even spread with as little spot lighting as possiable while keeping it as cheap as possiable. The look of the 4w and 4b looks exactley like my 14k sps hqi that is in my 28g.

[jessegarcia28]

How about an FTS of the tank, maybe a b4 and after

[Acefspds]

There is nothing but 2 clowns, 1 rock and a couple baby frags. I do not have any FTS of the CF light. I can take a FTS of the tank now but again there is basically nothing in it. When I took the CF light out of the Hood I did not save anything so I cant just throw it back up for a quick pic. I should have taken pics before but I knew the LED's would be brighter anyways so I didnt bother.

The SwmiLED's appear to be doing good. I am seeing the little baby kenyas growing more branches and polyps. I am seeing little polyps comin out of the stumps left behind by the kenya that had died under the lower lm LED's. The next coral test will be placing a BTA in the tank. Since it is my PNG True Perc breeder I am keeping the stock to a min.